Our readers from across the county give their weekly take on the biggest issues impacting Kent and beyond.

Some letters refer to past correspondence which can be found by clicking here. Join the debate by emailing letters@thekmgroup.co.uk

Refugees are only asking for our help

While it suits the agenda of some to encourage hysteria and hatred, a solution has to be found to the refugee problem that we have here in Kent. If we can all stay calm and approach the issue rationally then we might get somewhere.

Firstly, show some decency and compassion! Appreciate that these people have come to us for help (we used to be good at that sort of thing).

Many of the refugees have skills and qualifications in areas that we in the UK are so desperately short of - for example, health and social care. However, they are not allowed to work. Change this law and put them to work allowing them to earn a salary, pay taxes and settle into society.

Councils in England have refused to take a share of the refugees, which is why the burden has been on Kent. The Home Secretary should use her powers to ensure that others do their bit.

Make it possible to apply for asylum at any British Embassy and accept the French offer to set up a temporary post in Calais. Get some of the claims processed early.

Defeat the people smugglers by setting up means of safe passage, as has been the case for Ukrainian refugees. We do not see Ukrainians arriving in dinghies.

Ensure suitable holding conditions. The migrants do not have to have ‘luxury five-star hotels’, nor overcrowded barges, but somewhere to stay temporarily which is clean, comfortable and hygienic.

Drop the barbaric Rwanda idea of rounding up thousands of vulnerable people and deporting them by force in the hope that they will never be heard of again.

Drop the language and hysteria. It is not true that ALL refugees that arrive in Europe want to come to Britain – a tiny percentage do – usually because of family or language.

Stop seeing everything Europe-related as evil and work together in a continent-wide solution. Especially work together with France, which has camps where people are kept in awful conditions, and Germany, which takes more refugees than any other state.

Ask ourselves ‘why’? How many of us would risk our lives crossing a busy sea lane, over 20 miles, in a crowded dinghy, knowing we will get hatred and hostility once we get there? Crossing a busy road or a railway is dangerous enough. Why does someone do it? Asking ‘why’ would help us understand.

We have provided magnificent help for the people of Ukraine. We just need to realise that the refugees are also human beings who are asking for our help and hospitality.

Keith Nevols, Liberal Democrats

Asylum seekers are not grateful

Regarding the plight of the refugees who are ‘suffering’ aboard the Bibby Stockholm at Weymouth: Wind the clock back 60 years whilst serving aboard HMS Cavalier at Singapore, I slept upon a hard Formica-topped mess-deck table on a horse hair mattress with a piece of rope wrapped around my wrists to stop me falling off for 18 months, and without any air conditioning, sometimes with water rationing.

Given the opportunity, I would have swapped my accommodation for the Bibby Stockholm any day.

All I can say to the refugees is that if you’re not happy with your lot, then I’m sure Britain would gladly return you from whence you came as you obviously do not appreciate anything you are given and at the expense of the British taxpayer.

Sid Anning

Technology is letting down many people

Has the time come to pause and take stock of the obsession and reliance on computers?

Many innocent people's lives were ruined by the Post Office refusing to even consider their computer was making errors.

Someone in Northern Ireland has pressed the wrong button and police officers and civilians are rightly angry and worried.

Old people suffer the worst disadvantages and are held in contempt by those who profess that modern technology improves efficiency and makes our lives easier.

Soon it won’t be possible to make a train journey as there's no ticket office to receive cash in payment for your journey.

It's not possible to park in a town unless you have a smartphone, so many of the more ‘unusual’ shops are out of bounds.

The latest infringement on old people's liberties is the proposal to remove telephone landlines from domestic premises.

Here in Kent we suffer constant power outages. When we have no electricity the landline still works and is therefore a vital means of contacting the emergency services and other agencies.

Even if I had a mobile phone (which I don't) I wouldn't be able to charge it up due to a power cut.

Pete Trow

Ticket office closures must be scrapped

I am writing to highlight the proposed closure of rail ticket offices that will have a devastating impact on blind and partially sighted people’s ability to travel independently: stopping people getting to work, health appointments, and seeing friends.

Ticket offices are not just about selling tickets. They provide a reliable first point of contact for many kinds of staff assistance such as arranging sighted guidance through the station and safely onto the train, to advising on any changes to journeys.

Modernisation of our railways doesn’t just mean apps and touchscreens; modernisation means inclusivity and not leaving anyone behind. These proposals must be scrapped.

Sue Mustill

Let’s see more action on Eurostar absence

The article by Paul Francis on Eurostar is to be welcomed enormously. The ’national disgrace’ that is the Eurostar saga has received far too little coverage nationally and locally in the media, far too little discussion in Parliament and in local councils.

As well as being a ’national disgrace’ it is a ‘catastrophe’ for the Kent economy in a current and future context. This Paul Francis article apart, what attention it has received has been ridiculously mild compared to the impact and the principles at stake.

At last, in Jeremy Kite, the Dartford Borough Council leader, we have a politician who has shown a willingness to comment with 'fire in his belly'. Would that such fire could motivate local politicians throughout Kent and MPs in Westminster, particularly Kentish MPs. Where are the continuing expressions of outrage? Why is there not extensive coverage in media local and national (papers, TV, etc)?

Politically, I am a swing voter. On this issue, I criticise all our major political parties. The Tories for mismanaging their responsibilities whilst in government, resulting in their failure to recognise the potential impact of giving up vested power for short-term financial game, and a failure to develop and apply damage elimination/mitigation measures to rectify their mistakes. The other parties for not making the saga a massive issue in parliament.

The issue is a major 'national disgrace’ and, in matters of principle, a ‘monumental national disgrace’. We have a general election next year. This topic should be a factor in the agendas of all the major parties. Regionally, surely there can be rationale at all for it not being. For sure, I shall not be voting for any politician who is not vociferous on this topic. Let’s see more 'fire in the belly' please.

Colonel (Retired) David Burrill OBE

Cosy political establishment is here to stay

Obviously Pete Trow supports Nigel Farage because he recognises that the latter, unlike most politicians, says what he means and means what he says.

Thirty years ago, I was a colleague of Nigel, as we and a small group of like-minded allies, supported Dr Alan Sked to work to establish UKIP as a serious political party. We were, contrary to the assertions of Europhiles, motivated by a genuine belief that membership of the EU was bad for the UK on all levels, and a major threat to our democracy.

We were faced with a political establishment which, while each claiming to be presenting an alternative vision for the country, were actually agreed that EU membership was an immutable fact, supported by the British people. However, we believed that in reality the silent majority, once presented with the truth about the organisation, would reject its aims of forming a single European state, run by bureaucrats, not elected representatives.

Clearly creating a new party, capable of winning a general election, proved massively difficult, but we pressured the Conservatives into granting a referendum, which was then won by those who opposed following the path leading to the loss of our sovereignty. At no time were we concealing a malevolent agenda, as the Remainers asserted, but were straightforward and honest as to our beliefs.

Since June 2016 we have seen the losers of that vote do everything they could to frustrate the will of the people, and now we have a political class that seems determined to press on with the nonsense of net zero, ignore the anti-democratic activities of the woke, and to fail to find any way of dealing with illegal immigration.

Mr Trow is correct that an honest man would be the best choice to lead the fight to reverse all this, but unfortunately the tragedy is that to overthrow the cosy establishment consensus is the work of decades, not the one year we have left before the next general election.

Colin Bullen

Emission charges are just about the money

Ray Duff says that people are right to be concerned about climate change. I agree. However, as a consequence of the statement from the UN Secretary General that the planet has moved beyond warming to boiling and others in positions of influence making similar statements tantamount to the end is nigh, it is beginning to feel as if the world is going beyond concern to panic and hysteria, and it is causing many to make a decision they are probably going to regret. Buying an electric car.

I believe the rush to purchase electric vehicles will turn out to be a huge mistake. The stuff being churned out about their environmentally friendly credentials, so that drivers can feel they’re doing less harm to the planet, is just marketing hype and it’s causing a burgeoning escalation of lithium mining right across the globe. Mining that in itself is harmful to the environment.

As for all those in the UK alleging that our government is not doing enough, it is time to come down from what you believe is the moral high ground and begin applying a sense of proportion. In the list of the 20 most advanced industrial nations causing the most pollution, the UK is way down in 17th position, and if the UK ever reaches the mythical target of so-called ‘net zero’, our contribution to global greenhouse gas reduction will be somewhere between one and two percent. Negligible.

The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s Ultra Low Emission Zone is a classic example of how those sort of panic statements about the environment have been exploited to suit his agenda. He has continually repeated the mantra that 90% of vehicles are already compliant, so their owners won’t have to pay anything, but as reader Brian Barnard has pointed out, they are not the issue. It is the 10% owned by those on the lowest incomes and small businesses working on tight margins that are going to be the hardest hit.

If the Mayor was really serious about reducing pollution, he would have announced that by the end of his term in office he would have introduced legislation that would ban all older polluting vehicles from entering the zone, from the date the regulations were due to come into effect. That would have granted the time for small businesses and others to plan for the change.

Instead, he chose to introduce a system that allows the owners of the most polluting vehicles, providing they pay £12.50 a day, to travel anywhere they like in the zone causing the pollution he claims he wishes to prevent. It is a legal ‘scam’ that has nothing to do with reducing pollution and it is born out of the one word that has become the revenue creating weapon of choice for local authorities ‘decriminalisation’.

It began in the early 1990s with parking in London and since then has ballooned into the chosen way that local authorities penalise people for all manner of what used to be criminal offences, but have since become known as civil contraventions, and much as they might like to trot out the message that it’s about reducing pollution and improving driver behaviour, etc. The majority of people know that really it is ‘all about the money.’!

C. Aichgy